Polemic: Definition and Examples
By Richard Nordquist, Updated on July 03, 2019

Polemic is a mode of writing or speaking that uses vigorous and combative language to defend or oppose someone or something. Adjectives: polemic and polemical.

The art or practice of disputation is called polemics. A person who is skilled in debate or someone who is inclined to argue vehemently in opposition to others is called a polemicist (or, less commonly, a polemist).

Enduring examples of polemics in English include John Milton's Aeropagitica (1644), Thomas Paine's Common Sense (1776), The Federalist Papers (essays by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, 1788-89), and Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of
the Rights of Woman (1792).

The Introduction to Common Sense, a Polemic by Thomas Paine -------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable
outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
As a long and violent abuse of power is generally the means of calling the right of it in question (and in matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry), and as the King of England hath
undertaken in his own right to support the Parliament in which he calls theirs, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to
reject the usurpation of either.
In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided everything which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise and the worthy need not the triumph of a pamphlet: and those whose
sentiments are injudicious or unfriendly, will cease of themselves, unless too much pains are bestowed upon their conversion.The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not
local, but universal, and through which the principles of all lovers of mankind are affected, and in the event of which their affections are interested. The laying a country desolate with fire and sword, declaring war against the natural rights of all
mankind, and extirpating the defenders thereof from the face of the earth, is the concern of every man to whom nature hath given the power of feeling; of which class, regardless of party censure, is
THE AUTHOR.
-Philadelphia, February 14, 1776 (Thomas Paine, Common Sense)
"In January 1776 Thomas Paine released Common Sense, adding his voice for public consideration over the deteriorating British-American situation. The sheer volume of issues alone attests to the pamphlet's demand and suggests a significant impact on
colonial thought. [It was reprinted] over fifty times before the year was out, accounting for over five hundred thousand copies...The immediate effect of Common Sense was to break a deadlock between a minority of colonial leaders who wished to form an
independent American state and the majority of leaders who sought reconciliation with the British." (Jerome Dean Mahaffey, Preaching Politics. Baylor University Press, 2007)

John Stuart Mill on the Abuses of Polemics ----------------------------------------
"The worst offence of this kind which can be committed by a polemic is to stigmatize those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral men. To calumny of this sort, those who hold any unpopular opinion are peculiarly exposed, because they are in
general few and uninfluential, and nobody but themselves feels much interest in seeing justice done them; but this weapon is, from the nature of the case, denied to those who attack a prevailing opinion: they can neither use it with safety to themselves,
nor, if they could, would it do anything but recoil on their own cause. In general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence, from
which they hardly ever deviate even in a slight degree without losing ground: while unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who
profess them. For the interest, therefore, of truth and justice, it is far more important to restrain this employment of vituperative language than the other..." (John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859)

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-polemic-1691472

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